Japan is to introduce a new national holiday called Mountain Day in a move that may ease pressure on the nation’s overworked armies of salarymen.

The holiday, scheduled annually for August 11, was created after legislation was passed by Japan’s parliament following lobbying from the Japanese Alpine Club and other mountain-related groups.

The new public holiday, which will start from 2016, will celebrate all things mountain-related in Japan, a nation whose culture is founded on nature-inspired Shintoism.

The objective of the new legislation stated that the day was created in order to share “opportunities to get familiar with mountains and appreciate blessings form mountains”.

The new date will bring Japan’s total number of annual national holidays to 16, with other nationwide events currently including Ocean Day in July, Children’s Day in May and Health and Sports Day in October.

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This is the highest tally of national holidays among the Group of Eight major powers and twice the number of bank holidays enjoyed by workers in the UK.

However, unlike European workers who enjoy long annual summer holidays, Japan;s hardworking salarymen famously have very limited vacation time in addition to public holidays

Whether they will actually take time off during Mountain Day remains to be seen: last year, Japanese workers reportedly took off only 8.6 days of personal holiday time - less than half the average official entitlement - according to a government survey cited in the Wall Street Journal.

It is appropriate that the latest national holiday celebrates Japan’s mountains, with as much as 70 per cent of the archipelago covered in peaks and popular activities including walking, trekking and wintertime skiing.